Eye Candy Read Online Free PDF Page B

you’re into marketing for cats . . .
    One driver shoves the other onto his back on a taxi hood. They begin pounding their fists at each other. The driver on his back reaches up and pulls off the other’s turban. Grunting, cursing, they begin wrestling frantically for the turban, pulling it apart as they struggle. Finally, one of them heaves it into passing traffic, and a speeding SUV rolls over it.
    â€œJack, I’ve really got to go.”
    â€œSo can I call you?”
    â€œMaybe. Why don’t you email me?”
    I see the disappointment on his face.
    Two very young-looking police officers are jogging across Eighth Avenue, holding up their hands to halt traffic, hurrying to stop the fight.
    Jack lowers his face to kiss me. I turn my head so his lips brush my cheek.
    Again, I see his disappointed expression.
    â€œBye,” he says. He spins away, glances at the battling drivers, then takes off downtown.
    Cross him off the list, I tell myself. Dull, dull, dull. He’s history.
    But nothing is ever that simple, is it?

8
    The apartment was smoky and sweet-smelling. The tangy aroma of pot. Lou and Ann-Marie were in a haze, too. Wrapped up together on the livingroom couch, her skirt high on her thighs, one of her bare legs draped over his. A dim light behind them pierced the fog like a distant lighthouse.
    Ann-Marie giggled when she saw me. She had Lou’s hand in hers and was holding it between her legs. Her hair was wet and frazzled.
    She never used to get stoned before she met Lou. She never used to cook up big pans of lasagna and mountains of spaghetti marinara. She never used to go to metal concerts or Vin Diesel movies, either.
    Ann-Marie had changed a lot, all on Lou’s account, and I was happy for her, truly pleased to see her so glowing. She had been melancholy and depressed during the two years I roomed with her at NYU. No guys in her life. Unhappy because her older sisters were so good-looking and successful, and her parents treated her like she was some mutt they’d found in the pound.
    The October they forgot her birthday, I wanted to drive out to Little Neck and strangle them both. Instead, I spent hours trying to get her to stop crying and tearing at her hair and pounding her forehead against the windowpane.
    That was the year Ann-Marie decided she wanted a nose job for her birthday. I couldn’t talk her out of it. Her nose is perfectly okay. Luckily, she couldn’t afford it, and of course her parents wouldn’t spend anything on her.
    She was so unhappy with her looks, so unhappy over everything about herself, I sometimes had the feeling she’d like to crawl out of her skin completely, leave it behind the way a snake does.
    After college, I didn’t want to room with her. I wanted someone more stable, a little more fun, less depressed. I guess that makes me sound selfish. But I’d spent two years with Ann-Marie, and I knew we’d stay friends, so I started to make other plans.
    But then she found this huge apartment on West Seventy-ninth Street that was actually affordable, mainly because she found a pretty good job as an assistant at a talent management agency in the Village. When she asked me to room with her, I couldn’t say no.
    Ann-Marie seemed a lot better these days. Being out of all the competition and pressure at NYU freed her, I think, lightened her up. She spent long hours at her job. She liked it because it was kind of glamorous.
    The agency had a bunch of TV and music performers as clients—no huge stars, but a lot of names I recognized. Ann-Marie’s job was mainly to act as Mom, to take care of them, to get them hotel rooms and make restaurant reservations for them, to be there for them when any problems came up on the road, to make sure there were food baskets in their rooms when they arrived, and whatever they wanted to drink. Occasionally she’d even buy cocaine for them, but we had to get Ann-Marie pretty wasted before